I was referring to a book George Friedman (chairman of a US think tank STRATfor) who wrote a book the Next Decade. Keep in mind that this is a think tank and although a very famous and influential think tank, it does not mean the US administration will directly follow this policy.
Amazon.com: The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going : George Friedman: Books
Among many other things, he talks about using the internal tensions of the region to maintain a balance of power so that the dominant power in the region is unable to challenge the US. So balancing Israel and Arab states, Iraq-Iran, China with Japan and Korea and of course India and Pakistan. He actually advocates letting Pakistan get a controlling state over Afghanistan so that the balance of power in the subcontinent can be maintained. When the nuke tests happened in 98, there was almost a parity of sorts between India and Pakistan. It was only starting 2006-2007 that Pakistan started getting destabilized and now India has regained its pre-eminent position as the most powerful state in the subcontinent. This has to be kept in check.
Here is an interview excerpt on this issue.
February 1, 2011; The Next Decade: An Interview with George Friedman�|�McAlvany Weekly Commentary
David: So whether it was the Iraqi-Iranian balance of power, the Indian-Pakistani or the Arab-Israeli balance of power, in the context of the last two, five, ten years, even if you wanted to go back to the 1991 to 2003 period, prior to our engagement in Iraq, we have seen a shifting in the balance of power. Is it possible to regain it, or are we talking about a reconfiguration? Maybe you could start with looking at what that reconfiguration might look like in the Middle East. Of course, there are a number of questions I have for you on Europe, as well.
George: Sure. The first thing is to understand is that the United States has global interests, and no one region can supersede all others. The war on terror has thrown us off balance. Very reasonably, in the first few years we became obsessed with al-Qaeda and the Middle East because we simply did not understand what the threat was. But as we have reached a point of understanding two facts, that the threat is limited, but that it cannot be abolished, as we saw in Moscow recently, we will have terrorist attacks, and protecting against terrorism is one of the things you do, but it cannot be the only thing you do.
The United States right now is all in, in the Middle East. We have no ground forces for anyplace else. Our entire bandwidth is there. In that region there are three balances of power: The Arab-Israeli, the Iran-Iraqi, and the Indo-Pakistani. In Afghanistan, we are weakening the Pakistanis because we want them to fight alongside us, if you will, in Afghanistan, to do what they need to do, and in so doing, we threaten to destabilize the state, and thereby give India inordinate power in the region. We have to ask the question: Is anything in Afghanistan worth destabilizing the Indian subcontinent?
In the Arab-Israeli dispute, the Israelis are now overwhelmingly powerful. They are defining the region as they want to. The United States is listened to relatively little in this relationship. So the question is, how do we create a balance of power that has clearly slipped? It is a country that is fundamentally aligned with the United States, but the relationship has to be tweaked.
But the most important question we have is this: Iran is the largest conventional military force in the Persian Gulf. Nuclear power has nothing to do with it – they are simply the most powerful. We are withdrawing from Iraq. That means that the Iranians will fill the vacuum in Iraq one way or the other, and they will become the dominant power in the Arabian Peninsula, as well. They do not have to invade. The Saudis know how to read the situation and will accommodate themselves. These are areas in which we have to correct the situation.
In the case of Iran, we have two choices: A massive bombing campaign against their conventional forces, which has the virtue, if it works, of solving the problem. It has the vice, if it fails, of really having some angry Iranians coming at us.
The other alternative is to do what Roosevelt did with Stalin and Nixon did with Mao-Tse-Tung – both homicidal maniacs, quite crazed. Deal with the Iranians – cut a deal. Stabilize the situation if we can, and wait for the Turks to become more powerful and take over, because they have to.
In each case, you have a temporary solution. Americans hate temporary solutions. They want a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem, they want a solution to al-Qaeda, and that is not the way the world works. What you have is a series of temporary tweaks, hopefully small ones, that are constantly keeping the system in balance. What the United States, however, is doing right now, is massive over-interventions that destabilize the issues and create larger problems, because we are really not very sophisticated in how we work in the world.
